@Critterfixer-- ouch 'cause of third vax? Whatever the cause: hug! Today was getting stuff done, holding migraines at bay, and Pie Moment #1. Tomorrow: pies, pies, and more pies. Thanksgiving e-hugs to all y'all. Stay sane; be kind to yourselves.

Lori's ideas really resonated with me! And definitely play with time of day; having snacks while you work; frequent breaks; short bursts of work. I also wanted to suggest something I've just gotten the hang of in the past year or so: focus on engaging with the subject, not on making progress in it. Let your goal be simply doing math with your child, and don't focus your emotional energy on the mathematics: focus it on noticing what is working, identifying what isn't, and learning to work together joyfully & respectfully. Of course you'll need to correct math as you go, and figure out how to get concepts across. But let that be entirely secondary, almost incidental, to the "real" work of practicing working with your child and making it a life-enhancing experience. Instead of one that drives you to drink. Or chocolate. Well, I believe in self-medicating with chocolate so that'd be okay by me. 😉 Anyhow, the details and the way you think of it would be different than how I've put it here. But an approach like this can really help break out of toxic patterns. & ignore the idea if it isn't good for you & yours!!! hugs. this stuff is hard.

I like Math-U-See as one higher math option. Algebra II has required the most management by me (of the MUS upper level programs). You could also try Beast Academy 5 for the children and move them from that into AoPS Pre-Algebra. My children find the Beast Academy workbooks incredibly tedious, so they have preferred online when we do BA, and then I often need to be "at-elbow" during math time.

Well! Migraine prevention is going fine, but the rest feels like a hot mess. There you are! Today: same. Migraine prevention: exercise, yoga, eat well. Fitness & plenty of veggies for boys & for me. School: engage! House: straighten! Holiday. ??? maybe do at least one tiny thing??? dinner: we're out of chickpeas, so no shakshuka; out of eggs, so no souffle; it'll be pasta with a red pepper/sour cream sauce and fresh veggies. I have some frozen cookie dough I might bake into a few cookies for people. pm: piano lesson for younger. These are enough to initiate a migraine on their own. Ah well, maybe my head will be less pressurized when it's done 🙂

Morning! Hope revising goes well. All of it 😉 Today: Migraine prevention -- something aerobic, something strength-y, do best to do some yoga before bed, lifestyle stuff for anxiety/PTSD plenty of veggies & protein exercise as above orient toward meaningful work & joy: include pleasant & fun stuff; focus on doing stuff below & keeping it rewarding & enjoyable engage school -- continue doing, troubleshooting, smoothing out edges. house routines: engage them, straighten upstairs, figure out meals for Thurs & Fri + lunches holiday stuff: engage that, too. 🙂 report back with whatever I accomplished.

Today is lather, rinse, repeat. And: thanks for the encouraging words! fitness: our routines, really trying to get my stuff in despite RPG tonight; before-bed yoga for me. house routines holiday routines. Ha!!! I don't have any. 😉 engage holidays, then. school: engage our year. read some physical news/nonfiction, orient toward alleviating PTSD stuff.

Also: the link I gave for extra practice should also give you everything you need to teach the first 3 lessons of any Math U See level. So you could immediately try her in Algebra 1 or Geometry to see if it's a better fit. Don't worry if she needs to go further back than you'd like, just get her going strong and then you can see what else needs troubleshooting.

First: has she done Geometry? that ought to be done before Algebra 2 in the MUS sequence. Here's the Math U See placement tool. Second: you can get extra practice pages & other support for the first 3 lessons free here. Create an account if you don't already have one, and navigate to the resources for Math U See Algebra 2; toward the bottom of the page there's a button to download extra pages. I agree that Algebra 2 is a difficult Math U See to teach. The tests were a bit maddening, as sometimes the review material included concepts that the chapter work never mentioned and it would sort of "gotcha!" my child with stuff I thought was really inessential; I never counted as wrong a question on a topic that the text failed to review. However, the child who used it did come out with strong skills that generalized well to other programs.

We are struggling here too. Covid, geopolitics, national politics, climate change: these things have had a real effect on us or on people we care for. I have quite serious PTSD and for the last month or so it's been compounded by chronic migraines; both of these things can be managed with lifestyle, but it takes a lot of doing & is sort of demoralizing. And we have an 11.5 yo here, too. 😉 8FilltheHeart's ideas around this are brilliant, and I was happy to see that you might be able to apply them in your home. And HomeAgain's focus on connections -- in my own mind I call this "relationship" -- and an orientation toward art & "riches" is just the sort of thing we do. We're also making sure to keep bodies healthy as possible: exercise for everybody, getting outdoors when we can, eating nutritiously (usually -- I'm incorporating a measured & judicious amount of chocolate, and some baguette too). Right now I'm trying to orient toward joy: noticing it, cultivating it. I'm also trying to go a little Maria Montessori on things and bring my attention and love to even the menial, boring tasks I do with the children. Sort of framing them as opportunities to build relationship. Cultivating an attitude of "we're in this together." I myself have never had success in moving toward a refresher unit study, or switching things up, partly because my elder child is just in a league of his own when it comes to being difficult to educate. As in, after a week of him not liking what I'd switched us to and not enjoying the activities that are "supposed to be fun" I am much worse off than before. Not his fault; he's just wired differently. And if we take a total break week he usually starts to sort of crumble or be quietly miserable or noticeably rude -- he needs structure. Plus now he's in high school & we can't take a week off, we need to work hard more or less through August at this point for Reasons. What does work (often) is for me to scale back school and include arts/enrichment, even though the enrichment is never popular with the boys and they'd rather go play outside or mess with Legos or read their own stuff. I like to make regular progress on math & Latin & basic writing and have the children read something significant each day. And I like to try to make sure that each day has a moment or two of joy & beauty -- can be art, or artist/composer study, or reading aloud from "The Lord of the Rings" or whatever. Then I use my spare time to pick up the house, and get the boys' help, 'cause a neater house helps me so much. Of course, I have a small family & my youngest is 11, so that is just simpler to coordinate than it would be if I had more children, and younger. We have fewer moving pieces around here. And all the hard work I put in when my high-schooler was younger is paying off: he's fairly independent in his online classes and wants to help me out, so he's good about doing his work. Light at the end of the tunnel! -- those are just a few thoughts, and some empathy; though it's too long & chaotic 'cause of a migraine! At any rate, raising a family well is incredibly challenging & I hope you're able to find a space of grace, and that things feel better soon.

You and me both. Though I imagine you have a lot more to do than I have: this year I'm making pies only for the day, which is at a friend's house, and turkey & any fixins will just be for us to have at home. Here's to a virtual cuppa while we breathe deeply and gather ourselves ☕. I realized that I'm demoralized by how little forward I look forward to holidays. On the other hand, the children enjoy them and are not being self-centered about them; one of their major holiday wishes is for me to take a week of as complete a vacation as possible. Today's goals are dominated by migraine. So: manage migraine; not hurling would be lovely, bringing pain down good too fitness all around. !!! boys, me (what I can do with the head the way it is) school house work, holiday prep. This week is really more of the same. For my week: migraine prevention once this one's gone; I'm clearly in some sort of migraine lifestyle situation these days proactive dealing with anxiety & depression avoid online news; get it from my physical sources work to accept the amount of stuff I need to do to stay healthy & non-migrainey orient toward meaningful work & joy engage school: goal is to fully & joyfully engage it, and study our days & what we do to find what works well Flylady house routines: get going, do holiday prep -- with my head the way it is, prob. go Flylady on that too. Get Thanksgiving pie situation organized. Blessings to all y'all today. Be kind to yourselves.

Morning! Kicking it into gear today. 🙂 School goal: dip into each subject, get ducks in a row to start Week 36 (of our countdown). Oh boy. Fitness for me (do stuff); plan fitness for boys, incl. extra walks for younger Plan lunches & breakfasts for younger & for me. Clean, holiday prep, some garden work. Stay joyful.

Evening! Today saw: grocery shopping; piano, Latin & reading for younger; online coursework for elder; Anki all around. The house is majorly more-organized than at the beginning of the week. Legos have been cleared to make space for desks &c. Hurrah! And fitness happened for boys. I have some strength & yoga to do before bed and if I keep it up the insomnia should be better soon. 🙂 good luck on revisions, Critterfixer!

Yesterday didn't go quite as expected; but a good deal still happened. Much of it constructive. 🙂 Today: Continue to clean & organize upstairs, school area. Prioritize getting things set up to run school. yay-- going okay, and I did some necessary footwork that I'd been putting off. Fitness, me. Fitness, boys. Date-night dinner. Arts & skills focus for school: writing, math & reading; music & art; memory work, poetry ideally.

well, I posted yesterday but my internet blanked & the post got ether-ized. !!! Today: basics. Fitness, me. Fitness, boys. Get upstairs straightened. Ton of work, that! Homemade green & white pizza for dinner; classic pizza for younger. Spend time catching up with DH tonight after dinner. Probably over dishes 😉

Morning, y'all! Hope all's well as can be. Last week was mainly me trying not to get migraines. Which was successful. I'd hoped to be out of those woods, but nope, oh well. & I am well and truly a mess: depressed, migraine-y, the house is a disaster mostly 'cause all my housework went into boxing stuff up everything we don't need in the next month for the work on the house which, I learned Friday, won't be happening until January at the soonest. That's the local hard stuff. The good: DH & I are strong and the boys are well. Yay! This week: Get this house clean & sustainable. Oy vey. Clean yard so it doesn't put me in mind of a junkyard. Some of the stuff belongs to the work crew. Who won't be back until Jan. Oy vey, again. Daily yoga, aerobics, strength for me to up my mental health and prevent migraines. Daily runs + DareBee for boys. School. Oy vey the third. Basics: Latin, math, read-alouds, online classics, poetry memorization, artist & composer study, independent reading. Hope the wrist is better, @Critterfixer! And that this week, despite the fall-back start, goes well for you, @HomeAgain!

This might be too basic, but Memoria Press' Christian Studies program is very theologically neutral Bible study along the lines you give. It doesn't align quite with my beliefs, but then those are Nonconforming so it is to be expected. 🙂 Christian Studies III is the New Testament version. It isn't exactly "logic stage" but would be straightforward to do as a read-and-answer orally program if you had the teacher's guide + the suggested children's Bible. I like that it has memory work & geography. I have an extreme dislike for the way the Golden Children's Bible (which the program uses) depicts Jesus as blond & Mary as fairer than other Palestinians, but I fixed that with my Prismacolor portrait colored-pencil set. Note -- Jesus on the cover has dark hair; on the interior, he's blond-haired & blued-eyed enough to be Scandivanian. Alternatively, I'd suggest Ambleside Online's Bible story progression for the years 3+ I believe -- it starts with parallel Hebrew Bible & New Testament readings, and is very well chosen.

Morning to y'all! We're Getting Serious about school this week. Also: I'm getting a ton of exercise to ward off migraines. Today: Work hard on school, troubleshoot what we're doing and our "routines." Meet my exercise goals. Fitness for boys. Housework. Dinner. ???? Possibly grilled cheese. + veggies. 15" e-mail scutwork.

Morning! Today is Errand Day, basic school, fitness, get a handle on the house, manage another day without losing my mind. Or at least without losing all of it. 🙂 hugs to all y'all. Be kind to yourselves.

Quickly -- if you never did sentence diagramming, I wouldn't use CW to get it up and running. I never use that part of it. Agreed, 6-sentence shuffle is good for variation. And agreed with all above about the difficulty of using CW. We may be setting it aside for writing across curriculum + WWS (SWBauer's program).

Evening! The past few days have been sort of crazy. I'd been planning on handing off running our RPG game to somebody else. But he bailed at the last minute. No fun. The rest of today includes: fitness for boys; fitness for me; straighten the house; dinner (???); read-alouds.

Pre-posting for tomorrow. -1. Tonight, prep for shopping: list; pack my bag for Going Other Places; have library book onboard to return; &c. 0. Do some AM yoga. 1. Start with Fellowship of the Rings 2. Piano with younger + review states & capitals, math + classwork for elder. 3. Shopping 4. Fitness for everybody 5. Homemade pizza for dinner 6. Housecleaning, RPG work, prep next week's school as can.

Morning! Today I be like: if Leonidas could hold the pass, and the martyrs could face the lions, then I can educate these children & manage this house for one more day. It's a testable hypothesis! sort of. Here goes! The List: migraine management, catch cat-naps educate children: basics, including proactive math with younger & getting both math things going for elder troubleshoot AP testing site problem fitness: boys fitness: me house cleaning: hitting emergency status there, need to focus on it piano lesson tonight: be ready, have done some metronome work. make an honest effort to get my RPG recap out. dinner: I be like, wtf regarding dinner today. It'll be a Surprise. and Hail to my Fellow Homeschooling Adventurers today. Be good to yourselves, all y'all 🙂

Wishing you luck on the oven @Critterfixer. Today: keep on keeping on. Basic School. Boys' fitness. Fitness for me. Date Night Dinner. clean some. and: I'm catching up on sleep a bit. Hurrah!!!

@Critterfixer-- good luck with the oven! Today: basic school for boys RPG cleanup for me fitness for me, boys basic house get some mulch down in garden before rains again dinner: probably pasta. and before-bed readalouds for boys.

Morning! It is raining here, thank goodness. 🙂 The biggest goal this week is to catch up on sleep. Which unfortunately necessitates a lot of exercise. This week is running a game & getting my RPG game into good shape for storage, and possible Rapid Recall if I need to run it; plus building a character for the next game, which'll be run by Someone Else. For homeschooling, make sure that I've tried teaching all of our stuff so I know if it'll work or not. For the house, get upstairs clean. Which means putting a ton of it into boxes, because the floors are going to be refinished in a bit. And get all the garden stuff onto the ground: bunch of mulch, some pollinator-friendly salvia. Today: dinner; boys' fitness; straighten; fitness for me.